


sight words

by kokiri



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, First Meetings, For a Friend, M/M, Musicals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 04:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8131295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokiri/pseuds/kokiri
Summary: seungcheol, seungkwan, and the first few grueling days of the new semester.





	

**Author's Note:**

> LORD KRISTINE.. :'))))) i'm nERVOUS BUT I HOPE YOU LIKE..
> 
> this, as well as my recent junhoon and soonwoo, takes place in a verse about a small southern baptist liberal arts college vaguely located in the south. i think that should probably explain the concepts like Service Learning and Christ-like pretty well but if you have any questions pls ask. i will probably write a much longer piece about this verse one day but for now, i'm getting a feel for all of the characters!!!

It wasn’t enough that it was hot. It also had to be all muggy.  

“80 percent humidity,” Jeonghan sighed.

“WHAT?” Seungcheol said. It was hard to hear over the gaggle of nervous freshmen anxiously trying to find people to talk to during their first orientation activity, hoping to land at least one life-long friend this weekend.

Jeonghan turned on his megaphone. “80 PERCENT HUMIDITY!” he repeated. “AND I’M WEARING PANTS RIGHT NOW, REGRETTABLY.” He turned his attention towards their group, the ten kids he and Seungcheol were in charge of directing and guiding through the day’s activities. “WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY TO PLAY CORN HOLE AND CLIMB A BIG WALL, RIGHT? HEY, YOU. WHAT’S YOUR NAME? SEUNGKWAN, YEAH? SMILE! YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T COMPLETE ORIENTATION ACTIVITIES? YOU GET KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL. YOU WANNA GET KICKED OUT BEFORE CLASSES EVEN START? BE MY GUEST. HEY, SEUNGKWAN… I’VE GOT MY EYE ON YOU.”

“That’s not true,” said Seungcheol. “You can’t get kicked out of school for not doing orientation. Stop lying to them.”

“THAT’S TRUE.”

This kid—Seungkwan—was squinting up at Jeonghan in between dusting freshly mowed grass off of his pants. “You’re not even a professor. You’re just a student,” he said.

“I HAVE MORE AUTHORITY THAN THE AVERAGE STUDENT. I AM IN CHARGE OF YOU.”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” said Seungkwan.

“I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU RUN TEN LAPS AROUND THE FIELD AND YOU WON’T GET ANY WATER. YOU’LL FAIL ORIENTATION IF YOU DON’T LISTEN TO ME.”

“You can’t fail orientation.”

“YES YOU CAN. I WILL FAIL YOU.”

Seungcheol pried Jeonghan’s megaphone out of his hands. “JEONGHAN GETS A LITTLE TESTY WHEN HE’S OVERHEATED,” he said.

“Ahhhh,” Jeonghan whined, grabbing his megaphone back. “SEUNGCHEOL IS A FU—” The shrill sound of a whistle pierced the air, indicating that it was finally time for the activities to officially begin. Seungcheol and Jeonghan’s group was playing the lava game, where the kids had to think of creative ways to get across and imaginary field of lava and only a few of them were granted the gift of magic lava-resistant shoes. It was supposed to teach them teamwork, or something like that.

“SEUNGKWAN DOESN’T GET LAVA-RESISTANT SHOES,” said Jeonghan. “YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE? SEUNGKWAN DOESN’T HAVE ANY ARMS, EITHER!”

“WHAT,” Seungkwan yelled.

“SO YOU CAN’T HANG ON TO ANYONE’S SHOULDERS.”

“Then how am I supposed to cross the lava!”

“The point of the game is to think creatively.” Seungcheol was trying to be diplomatic. The truth was, the poor kid was going to have to comply because once Jeonghan started severing everyone’s arms and legs, there was no turning back. He was a terrible orientation partner, to be honest, and Seungcheol had no idea why he had been cursed with the misfortune of being partnered with him for two years in a row.

Seungkwan pouted at the back of the line, trying to think of how he was going to cross the field of molten lava with no magic lava-resistant shoes or arms. He watched as the other kids in his group were transported from one side of the lava to the other by hanging off of one really tall guy, until Jeonghan decided that they were cheating and took away his magic lava-resistant shoes, too.

By the time it was Seungkwan’s turn, he was still stumped. He looked at the group a few feet away, about twelve kids all trying to fit on a tiny box without any of their body parts touching the ground. It didn’t seem like any of them had gotten their arms taken away.

“Does what’s his name have magic lava shoes?” asked Seungkwan, nodding towards Seungcheol, who was thoroughly uninvolved in the struggles of this armless freshman attempting to make his way across the treacherous hellscape before him.

Jeonghan scrunched his nose up. “YES,” he said into his megaphone.

“Okay,” said Seungkwan. “Hey, you! Carry me.”

Seungcheol, halfway immersed in a text message to one of the other group leaders, laughed so hard at this demand he dropped his phone on the ground and almost crushed it under his feet. “That’s funny, kid. You’re a funny one.”

“I’m serious. You have lava shoes and arms. I don’t. Carry me. Pick me up and carry me.”

“I’M TAKING SEUNGCHEOL’S ARMS AWAY.”

“You can’t take my arms!”

“AND HIS LEGS.”

“You don’t have that power over me! You can’t do that!”

“AND HIS MOUTH.”

“JEONGHAN.”

“OKAY, FINE. I’M TURNING SEUNGCHEOL INTO A HORSE, WITH ALL FOUR LEGS WHICH ARE LAVA-RESISTANT. BUT STILL NO MOUTH.”

Seungcheol stammered absolute nonsense while Seungkwan crossed his non-existent arms.

“Okay, well,” Seungkwan said. “Get on the ground.”

“What the f—”

“YOU HAVE NO MOUTH.”

Seungcheol blinked. Jeonghan tilted his head. Letting go of any and all dignity and self-respect, Seungcheol became Seungkwan’s noble steed and carried him across the lava.

It was going to be a long weekend.

 

 

 

The next day was dedicated to service learning, which Seungcheol tried not to be bitter about. It involved waking up at about five in the morning, walking a lot, and spending hours writing sight words in tiny little booklets for underprivileged kids. Jeonghan pleasantly reminded him that it probably wasn’t good for Seungcheol’s mortal soul to be resentful of having to do charity work as a part of his duties as an orientation leader.

There were some housing units across the street from campus where the college had set up an after school program for the kids that lived there, as their parents often worked long hours and the kids needed something to do during the time between school ending and their parents returning home for the evening. Today Seungcheol’s group would be building shelves for their supplies and putting together learning materials for them – a worthy cause, and not the worst or most excruciatingly painful way to spend a day, but Seungcheol really was not a fan of waking up early. He was also not a fan of country music, which was what was playing on the radio, just loud enough for Seungcheol to hear over the haphazard use of power tools in the other room.

Seungkwan was using an orange magic marker to neatly write _THE, AN, IS, SEE, YOU, TO, GO_ and other similar words in a little book made out of construction paper. He was sitting at one of the tables normally designated for the younger students in the program, and the chair was so tiny that it had him sitting with his knees all scrunched up to his chest. Seungcheol sat down across from him in the same manner.

“You didn’t want to help with the shelves?” he asked.

“Everyone wanted to help with the shelves. Someone had to do the sight words,” Seungkwan answered briskly. “They all said it wouldn’t be any fun to make the word books. What does it matter what’s fun? It matters what the kids need, right? How inconsiderate.”

Seungcheol grabbed a green marker and one of the empty books. He scribbled _THE_ on the first page. “That’s right. How mature of you.”

“Oh,” Seungkwan said, “believe me. I’m very mature. The pinnacle of maturity compared to those kids. Hey. Your name is Seungcheol, right? I meant to ask yesterday. Just to be sure. But you didn’t have a mouth.”

“Right.” Seungcheol rolled his eyes, remembering the slew of photos of himself carrying this small freshman on his back across an imaginary lava pit taken from different angles which had been texted to him earlier that morning with a grand total of about five million laughing emojis. “Jeonghan hates orientation a lot. He always gets wrangled in to doing it, though. He’s secretly a nice guy. A nice guy who likes to steal arms and legs from innocent people, but still.”

“Isn’t that how it goes?” Seungkwan asked. “People come to this school and then they start hating their lives.”

“Who told you that?”

“Everyone says that. At first it seems all nice. A small college based on kindness and charity and Godliness, where financial aid abounds because that’s the way Jesus would want it to be. But then… if you don’t end up dropping out first… you slowly just feel your soul withering away. Right?”

“Absolutely not,” Seungcheol said. Except that was totally the truth.

Seungkwan finished his book and grabbed another one. He switched out markers – because the kids would appreciate the variety, he said – and started over.

“Well,” he said, “keep telling yourself that I guess. But I can see it in your eyes. You’re… dying.”

“Hey,” Seungcheol said. “This isn’t okay. I’m the mentor. You’re the mentee.”

Seungkwan puffed out his cheeks.  “Sure,” he said cheekily. “You’re the _mentor_. Right. Steer me in a Christ-like direction.”

Seungcheol stared at Seungkwan. This deceptively cute kid writing sight words for underprivileged children in an adorable little construction paper booklet, taking care to not reuse any colors, was actually a snotty little terror. What a punk.

 

 

 

The next day, the orientation activities were optional. Seungkwan did not partake. Seungcheol wondered why he noticed and – more importantly – why he cared.

 

 

 

On the first day of class, Seungcheol spotted Seungkwan staring at the poster on the cafeteria door advertising the auditions for the fall musical. It was some musical about the Old Testament that he had never heard of before. He quietly snuck up behind Seungkwan and brought down a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“FUUUUCK,” Seungkwan gasped in horror.

“Hey! Don’t say that word. Remember? Christ-like.”

Seungkwan peered at him with unforgiving, judging eyes.

“I’m just kidding; I honestly don’t give a shit. Are you going to audition for that?”

Seungkwan shrugged. He tugged on the straps of his backpack nervously. “I don’t know if I should. I mean, I’m just a freshman and… the theatre program here is amazing, everyone knows that. So what’s the point? I probably wouldn’t even make it into the chorus. But… I was practicing all day yesterday. That’s why I wasn’t at the time management seminar, or whatever that was. I couldn’t decide on a song.”

“It was honestly… really boring,” Seungcheol admitted. “You weren’t missing much. Anyway, I have an idea! You should let me hear your songs. I’ll help you pick out the one I think sounds best.”

“Why…” Seungkwan said hesitantly.

“Because! I told you. I’m the mentor. You’re the mentee. I’m here to help you.”

Seungkwan was nervous – or maybe suspicious was the right word. But they walked back to the freshman dorms together, Seungkwan getting chattier and chattier the more he got into explaining the premise of the musical and the characters he would most like to play. Cain clearly had the best song in the first act, but Seungkwan didn’t want to play a bad guy just yet. He wanted to establish his brand as a nice, boy next door type actor before breaking out the grittier material. So he really wanted to play Noah’s son in the second act, the one who was in love with the daughter of Cain. That was an agreeable, pleasant role – but a role that every boy auditioning would be after. He didn’t have to admit out loud that he felt he stood no chance for Seungcheol to realize that this was the case.

They climbed the stairs to the second floor and Seungkwan unlocked his room. The room was pretty sparse, belongings only partially unpacked, and spread across the floor were pages and pages of sheet music. Seungkwan organized them by song and handed them to Seungcheol.

“My options right now are this song from _Next to Normal_ , and this song from _Spring Awakening_. I’m trying to keep it contemporary. But I am also thinking of this song from _My Fair Lady_.” He stopped and hummed a line or two. “Maybe you’ve heard it.”

Seungcheol shook his head.

“Well, it’s a classic. Here. I’ll sing it first. Ah… I’m a little nervous, because it’s you, and you’re right here in front of me. I’m going to have to ask that you turn away and look at the wall. Okay?”

“Sure. But I won’t indulge you forever. If you can’t sing for me right here in your dorm, how are you going to sing for an auditorium full of people?” Seungcheol turned to face the wall.

Seungkwan started off sounding nervous at first. Quiet, losing the rhythm, trailing off to remember the lyrics. After a few measures, his voice grew more confident with each word. Seungcheol felt like maybe he had heard this song before, as it scratched at some distant memory in the back of his head. Maybe a movie that his mother used to watch when he was a little kid. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to, but he peeked over his shoulder and glanced at Seungkwan, who looked so natural and in his element that Seungcheol was almost a little taken aback that he would even be worried about his audition at all. Seungkwan noticed that Seungcheol was looking at him, made an ugly face but continued singing. 

“ _Let the time go by, I won’t care if I... can be here on the street where you live..._ Seungcheol, you incredible ass, I specifically asked you to stare at the wall.”

“I couldn’t help it!” Seungcheol said. “From mentor to mentee, I think you should use that song. That was really good, Seungkwan. You’ll definitely make it into the show. And you’re way too good for just the chorus.”

“Well,” Seungkwan said, sticking his nose in the air, “I guess we’ll see.” He thumbed through the sheet music, returned to the first verse, and sang through it again. He waved his hands in the direction of the wall impatiently until Seungcheol finally gave in and turned away from him. It was probably better that way; Seungcheol would have been too embarrassed to let Seungkwan see him looking as starstruck as he felt. 

 

 

“Okay, are you sure you don’t mind going to my audition with me?”

“I told you a million times, I’m sure.”

“And you’ll wait in the lobby. You won’t wait anywhere near the auditorium door. If you accidentally hear me, I’ll know, and I’ll die. I’ll literally just die right there on the spot.”

“I’ll wait outside the building if you want me to. I swear. I won’t listen to you sing. Seungkwan, calm down! You’re going to do great.”

“Okay.” Seungkwan put his sheet music in a folder and slipped the folder into his backpack. “Will you carry this for me?” he asked, extending his arm and handing the backpack to Seungcheol.

Seungcheol stared at him, appalled. “Why the hell do I have to carry your bag for you?”

”Because that’s what you get when you sign up to be my personal assistant,” Seungkwan said, tilting his head and placing one of the backpack straps around Seungcheol’s wrist whether he liked it or not. “And don’t you remember? I don’t have arms.”


End file.
